
Till today (1 Oct 2020), more than 380 units out of 566 in the 99-year leasehold development at Sims Drive had been taken up, said Hong Leong. The units were sold at prices starting from $788,000 for a one-bedroom apartment, $943,000 for a two-bedder, $1.33 million for a three-bedder and $2.11 million for a four-bedder, with some one bedroom condo units selling close to $1,800 psf.
The project's apartment sizes range from 474 square feet (sq ft) for a one-bedroom unit to 1,389 sq ft for a four-bedroom unit. Take-up was good across all unit types, with the selling prices working out to $1,500 to $1,700 per square foot, said Hong Leong with nearly 85 per cent of buyers being Singaporeans and permanent residents and foreigners making up the rest. Keen interest was also seen from HDB upgraders across areas islandwide.
To promote a sustainable residential property market where prices move in line with economic fundamentals, the Singapore Government introduced a series of control measures since 2011. Among them are the Additional Buyer’s Stamp Duty (ABSD), Seller’s Stamp Duty (SSD) and the Loan-to-Value (LTV) ratio.
Huttons Asia real estate professional Kiwi Lim believe these cooling measures have effectively removed property speculators from Singapore's property market and managed Singapore's real estate prices to a realistic affordable level for upgraders and for local genuine demand.
With developers running out of land banks for future condo project launches, it is possible that developers will start to buy land and kickstart the en bloc cycle in 2021. The last en bloc cycle started in 2016. 2021 marks the fifth year from 2016 and most, if not all developers would have sold out their units.
The last en bloc cycle started in 2016 when the uncompleted unsold units dropped to 20,000 units. As of 2Q 2020, the uncompleted unsold units stand at 27,977 units. In 1H 2020, developers have sold more than 3,800 units. July and August developer sales are expected to be more than 2,000 units in total. Even if the monthly sales for the remaining four months of 2020 slowed to 600 to 700 units, developers could be looking at selling 4,400 to 4,800 units in 2H 2020 or 8,200 to 8,700 units for 2020. If the sales momentum continues in 1H 2021, the number of uncompleted unsold units will dip below 20,000 units by 1H 2021. That is going to be a record low number of unsold units in recent years.